The
majority of black slave owners were members of the mulatto class, and
in some cases were the sons and daughters of white slave masters. Many
of the mulatto slave owners separated themselves from the masses of
black people and attempted to establish a caste system based on color,
wealth, and free status. According to Martin Delany, the colored
community of Charleston City clung to the assumptions of the superiority
of white blood and brown skin complexion.

These
mulattoes of the old free Black elite did not attend church with the
dark-skinned blacks of Charleston City. They not only formed
congregations which excluded freedmen of dark complexion, but they only
married among other mulattoes to “keep the color in the family.”

Large
numbers of free Blacks owned black slaves in numbers disproportionate
to their representation in society. According to the federal census of
1830, free blacks owned more than 10,000 slaves in Louisiana, Maryland,
South Carolina, and Virginia. The majority of black slave-owners lived
in Louisiana and planted sugar cane.

Slave
holding among the mulatto class in South Carolina was widespread
according to the first census of 1790, which revealed that 36 out of
102, or 35.2 percent of the free Black heads of family held slaves in
Charleston City. By 1800 one out of every three free black recorded
owning slave property. Between 1820 and 1840 the percentage of
slaveholding heads of family ranged from 72.1 to 77.7 percent, however,
by 1850 the percentage felt to 42.3 percent.

According
to the U.S. Census report in 1860 only a small minority of whites owned
slaves. Out of a population of 27 million whites only eight million
lived in the South, and out of this population fewer than 385,000 owned
slaves. In short, the total white population own about 1.4, while the
southern white population own about 4.8 enslaved Africans.

On
the other hand the black population in 1860 was 4.5 million, with about
500,000 living in the South. Of the blacks residing in the South,
261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans.
In New Orleans over 3,000 free blacks owned slaves, about 28 percent of
the free Black population in the city.

Year

Owners

Slaves

1790

49

277

1800

36

315

1810

17

143

1820

206

1,030

1830

407

2,195

1840

402

2,001

1850

266

1,087

1860

137

544

The
following chart shows the free Black slave owners and their slaves in
Charleston, 1790-1860.In 1860 there were at least six African Americans
in Louisiana who owned 65 or more slaves. The largest number, 152
slaves, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards,
who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Black slave magnate in
Louisiana with over 100 slaves was Antoine Dubuclet, a sugar planter
whose estate was valued at $264, 000. In North Carolina 69 free Blacks
were slave owners.

The
majority of urban black slave owners were women. In 1820, free black
women represented 68 percent of heads of households in the North and 70
percent of slaveholding heads of colored households in the South. The
large percentage of black women slave owners is explained by manumission
by their white fathers, or inheritance from their white fathers or
husbands. Black women were the majority of slaves emancipated by white
slave owning men with whom they had sexual relations. Thirty-three
percent of all the recorded colonial manumissions were mulatto children
and 75 percent of all adult manumissions were females.

THE FIRST BLACK SLAVE OWNER--AND THE ORIGINS OF SLAVERY

Euro-Americans
arrived in Jamestown Virginia in 1607, and the first large group of
Africans arrived in 1619. However, House of Burgess records show that
Africans were already in the colony before 1619. John Rolfe provides us
with an eyewitness account of this first group. “About the last of
August [1619] came a Dutch man of Warre that sold us twenty negars.”
Among them was one called Antonio from Angola. Later, we find that
Antonio becomes Anthony Johnson. Other listed was Angelo, a negro
woman,” and John Pedro, a neger aged 30.” The census of 1624-25 showed
that there were twenty-three Africans living in Jamestown, Virginia
listed as servants and not slaves.

Africans
coming to Jamestown between 1630 and 1640 could expect to be freed
after serving their indented period of time about seven to ten years for
Africans and Indians. At this time there was no system of perpetual
servitude or slave for life, but the system was rapidly evolving.
Between 1640 and 1660 slavery was becoming a customary reality. In 1640
three servants of Hugh Gwyn, “a Dutchman called Victor, a Scotchman
named James Gregory, and John Punch, a negro,” having run away from
their master were overtaken in Maryland and brought back to stand trial
for the misbehavior. The verdict of the court would change the system
of indentured servitude and set the system in transition to plantation
slavery. The court ruled that the three servants shall received
punishment by whipping and have “thirty stripes apiece.” The court
ordered that the Dutchman and the Scotchman should “first serve out
their times with their master according to their Indentures and one
whole year apiece after the time of their service is expired” and that
they shall served the colony for three years. “The third being a negro. .
.shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural
life.” This marks the first time that race and color becomes a factor
in the status of both black and white indentured servants. In other
words, the system is rapidly evolving to meet the new demand for cheap
labor, and race is slowing being used as the justification for the
enslavement of peoples of African origins. Between 1640 and 1660
Africans were going to court and suing for their freedom.

In
1644 Thomas Bushrod, assignee of Colonel William Smith, sold a mulatto
boy named Manuel “as a slave for-Ever, but in September, 1644 the said
servant was by the Assembly adjudged no Slave and but to as other
Christian servants do and was freed in September, 1665." A similar
ruling is found in the case Robinson.

In
1649, there were about three hundred Africans in the colony and an
increasing mulatto population. African and European indentured servants
off springs were increasing and considered alarming in regard to the
status of the mulatto. That is a system was evolving based on being
either black or white.

Africans
who entered Jamestown between 1620 to 1650 could expect to be freed
after serving their indented time and given 50 to 250 acres of land,
hogs, cows and seeds and the right to import both white and black
indentured servants. For a brief period in American history between
1630 to 1670, a number of Africans had become freedmen and owned
indented white servants. The act of 1670 forbidden free Negroes to own
Christian servants but conceded the right to own servants of their own
race. By 1670, it was becoming customary to hold African servants as
“slaves for life,” and by 1681 what was customary became law.

The
first laws regarding the status of Africans recognized the free
blacks. The first status was passed in 1662 provided that the status of
offspring should follow that status of the mother. What this law did
was to allow white fathers to enslave their own children, and free women
of color to perpetuate the free black population. In other words, it
also guaranteed freed black females the right to extend their free
status to their children. Black women who have served their indentured
period would not provide foundation for the free black community. Many
of those African who were grandfathered in the new system not only
became the free black community, but this is the origins of Black slave
owners.

The
act of 1668 dealing with the condition of the colored population
related solely to the tax obligations of a free black woman, and two
years later an act guaranteed to “negroes manumitted or otherwise free”
the right to own servants of their own race and expressly denied to them
the right to purchase or to own white or “Christian servants.” This
law recognized and sanctioned slavery, but also guaranteed the
continuity of the free black class, who were now largely mulatto.

ANTHONY JOHNSON

Black
slave owners have not been studied as a part of American history,
rather as a datum to American history, and yet slavery as a perpetual
institution is legalized based on a case brought before the House of
Burgess by an African, who had been indentured in Jamestown, Virginia
1621 and was known as Antonio the Negro according to the earliest
records. He later Anglicized his name to Anthony. Anthony Johnson was
believed to be the first Black to set foot on Virginia soil. He was the
first black indentured servant, the first free black, and the first to
establish the first black community, first black landowner, first black
slave owner, and the first person based on his court case to establish
slavery legally in North America. One could argue that he was the
founder of slavery in Virginia.

Anthony Johnson arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1621. In 1623,
Antoney[sic] and Isabella married. The next year they were the proud
parents of William. William is believed to be the first African
American born in British America. During his first years in North
America, he escaped death in an Indian attack on Jamestown. During
the following year Africans and people of color were a small minority in
the Virginia colony. The census of 1625 reported only twenty-three
Africans living in the colony out of a total of 1,275 white people and
indigenous Africans. By 1649 the total black population was only 300
out of a total of 18,500 whites.

In
1635 Johnson’s master, Nathaniel Littleton finally released him. As
the custom was he received a 250 acre plantation in 1651 under the “head
right system” by which the colonial government encouraged population
growth by awarding fifty acres of land for every new servant a settler
brought to Virginia. He became the master of both black and white
servants.

Anthony
Johnson's plantation was located on the neck of land between two creeks
that flowed into the Pungoteague River in Northampton County. A few
years later, his relatives, John and Richard Johnson, also acquired land
in this area. John brought eleven servants to the colony and received
550 acres, and Richard brought two and received 100 acres.

In
1654 Anthony Johnson went to court and sued his white neighbor for
keeping his black servant John Casor. Casor claimed that Johnson “had
kept him his serv [an] t seven years longer than hee should or ought.
Johnson who the courts described as an “old Negro,” claimed that he was
entitled to “ye Negro [Casor] for his life.” Johnson realized that if he
continued and persisted in his suit, Casor could win damages against
him. So, Johnson brought suit against his white neighbor Robert Parker,
whom Johnson charged had detained Casor “under pretense [that] the
s[ai]d John Casor is a freeman.” The courts now ruled in his favor and
John Casor was returned to him and Parker had to pay the court costs.

This
case establishes perpetual servitude in North America, and it is ironic
that the case was brought to the court by an African who had arrived
from Angola in 1621. Slavery was established in 1654 when Anthony
Johnson, Northampton County, convinced the court that he was entitled to
the lifetime service of John Casor; this was the first judicial
approval of life servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

Anthony
Johnson lived on his plantation surrounded by his white neighbors. He
had entered a system not based on slavery, but indentured servitude.
There were many Anthony Johnson's in America, who never spent a day in
slavery but were owners of slaves.

MARIE THERESE METOYER

In
1767, a Frenchman named Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer met Marie Therese
Coin-Coin from the Kongo and promptly fell in love. They became
immediate occupants in Natchitoches, Louisiana where Marie and Claude
lived together as man and wife. They had their first children together
in January 1768, a set of twins. Things were rough going for the couple;
the church would not have anything to do with the relationship and at
this time Marie and her infant son Augustine were still enslaved. Early
in 1776 Metoyer purchased his child and shortly after that in a private
document he freed Marie and the child. Years later Marie and Metoyer
broke up but, not before fathering six children. Marie stayed in
Natchitoches and worked the Melrose plantation Claude Metoyer left for
her; he then moved to New Orleans, left for France and married a proper
French woman.

In
1778 free nonwhites were a very small minority in Natchitoches,
Louisiana. By 1785, that had not changed. Marie, Augustine, and two
additional sons born to her after manumission were half of the free
nonwhite population. By 1786, she had eight children Augustine, Pierre,
Joseph, Dominique, Francois, Toussaint, Louis, Marie Suzanne, four of
whom were still enslaved.

From
the money and land that Metoyer gave her, she started a plantation.
The first crop was tobacco, and in 1792 she was shipping 9,900 rolls to
Cuba for cigars (Mills, 30). She also produced indigo, manufactured
medicine and the major source of her income came from hunting bears and
fowl. All this was done with the help of her older sons, because she
had no slaves at this time. She tried for nine years to free her other
children from slavery and in 1815 when Metoyer died all her children
were freed. In 1816 written Church documents show that she had twelve
slaves, but local tradition credits her with many more. Marie Theresa
now had three plots of land estimated at 11,000 acres. She was now in
her late sixties and completely turned over the plantation to her
children. She died sometime in the spring of 1816.

Augustine
was now married and on his own since 1795. He was the first of Marie
and Claude's children to acquire a plantation, and become a slave owner.
Within two years he purchased his first slave, a male between the age
of eighteen and twenty to help him clear the fields. Most of the slaves
he bought were for labor, but he did purchase some for family
devotion. In 1798, he bought his second slave, an eight-year-old named
Marguerite who was his wife's sister. In 1800, $300 was paid for his
third slave; this was a child of his still enslaved brother. The next
year a slave named Marie was purchased and became Pierre’s wife. His
second labor slave was purchased in 1806, a female to be the wife of the
male he already owned. In June of 1809, Augustine purchased eight
“African Negroes” for $3,500 cash: a male, five boys and two girls aged
eleven to thirteen, and then three of the males were sold to his brother
for $1,350. In 1810, he purchased two more slaves from a planter in
the next county. Similar purchases and manumissions are recorded for of
the Metoyer children. In 1810, Marie Suzanne purchased a slave costing
$600; the peculiar thing was that she was still a slave herself. By
the 1810 census Augustine had seventeen slaves; Louise, fifteen; Pierre,
twelve; Dominique, eight; Francois, three; Joseph, two; and Toussaint,
one. A total of fifty-eight slaves were acquired in just twelve years.
The fifty-eight slaves had increased to 287 by the end of 1830. The
Metoyer surname owned an average of 2.3 slaves per person, and the
whites in the county only owned an average of .9 slaves per person. No
other family group came close to matching the holdings of the Metoyer
name.

The
affluent period was between 1830 and 1840 for the Metoyer family.
Pierre, one of the less prosperous brothers died in 1834 leaving a
plantation of 677 acres, after giving his seven children land for their
marriages. Augustine divided the land between six children and kept two
plantations for himself, which contained 2,134 acres (Mills, 109).
Early in 1850 the Metoyer family had improved their land by 5,667 acres
and had a total of 436 slaves. In the treatment of Metoyer family
slaves there are some contradictory statements.

When
it came to the treatment of slaves black owners were “in a bind”. If
they were nice to their slaves, they were considered by the whites to be
overly tolerant. On the other hand, if they treated their slaves
harshly the blacks would say they were abusive of “their people”. Legend
has it that one of the original Metoyer brothers was a hard taskmaster,
but not to his own slaves. He would try-out the slaves and makes them
do the worst work on his plantation, things that he didn’t want his own
slaves doing. After the work was done he would return the slave and
claim poor working habits. That same tradition holds for one of the
sisters also; there are also many written advertisements about runaway
slaves that the Metoyer family put in the local newspaper. They
occasionally hired a slave catcher to retrieve a slave. There is no
real proof that the Metoyer family was any different from other slave
owner’s black or white. Not all of the black slave owners worked and
owned plantations. There were many black masters who were artisans and
used slaves as workers. One of the most prominent of these owners was
William Ellison.

WILLIAM ELLISON (APRIL)

On
June 20, 1820 April Ellison appeared in the Sumter District courthouse
in Summerville, South Carolina, to change his slave name. Since, he was
a free man he wanted his name changed to his former master’s William.

After
his emancipation William moved to Stateburg, South Carolina (see figure
2) and became an apprentice for Mr. William McCreight. After four
years of hard labor and William Ellison was ready to start his own
business as a gin maker. The first few years he primarily repaired
gins, but each year his customers and reputation grew. Between June 8,
1816 and January 1817, William (then April) purchased and freed his wife
Matilda and his daughter Eliza Ann and brought them to Stateburg. His
son Henry was born in or near Stateburg in January 1817, followed two
years later by William Jr. and in another two years by Reuben.

By
1820 Ellison had managed to buy his first two slaves, two males, ages
twenty-six and forty-five respectively. With the purchase of the two
slaves he demonstrated to the local whites that he was not afraid to
own, use and exploit slave labor. In just four short years he was a
master gin maker, had changed his name and was now a slave owner.

William
purchased a valuable location for his shop right at the cross road of
town. The going rate at the time was $3.00 to $7.00 an acre, but he
knew what prime land was worth and paid $375.00 for the land to his
shop. The gin business flourished, and his reputation among the whites
grew. Now that he was a prominent figure in the community he purchased
more land, but this land was for a plantation.

To
William Ellison slaves were a source of labor. This ideology helps to
explain why there was a ratio male to female of 4 to 1 in the 1860s.
The male slaves were a direct source of income, the females were future
benefits. Assuming that the women produced children at a ratio of one
boy to one girl the best explanation for a shortage of girls is that
they were sold as slaves. The average price for a slave girl was $400
and selling twenty girls would add additional $8,000 cash, which could
contribute to land and slave purchases. This silent tradition around
Stateburg was not questioned, but his reputation as a harsh master was
talked about. His slaves were said to be the district's worst fed and
clothed. Ellison and his family lived frugally; he was even more
tightfisted about providing food, clothes, and housing for his slaves.
His harsh treatment may have come from the fact that his slaves were
very bitter, because the men and women had seen their daughters sold
away into slavery. Also, the harsh treatment could have been from
Ellison’s need to prove to the whites that he was not soft on slaves,
because of his color. Sometimes his slaves ran away, and on at least one
occasion he hired a slave catcher. He never skipped on medical care
for his slaves, but he did not care to help their spiritual needs.
Through all the years William Ellison may have been harsh on his slaves,
but the money they produced helped keep his family well-to-do up until
the Civil war.

In
1829 he purchased two more male slaves between the ages twelve and
twenty-four. Early in the 1830s Ellison started using his sons as gin
makers, but there was still more work than the men could handle. At the
end of the decade, Ellison now owned thirty-six slaves thirty were
male, and six female who mostly worked the fields and produced
children. The census at this time had Ellison with fourteen slaves. As
his ownership of slaves grew so did his land, buying over 350 acres in
that ten-year span. By his fiftieth birthday, in 1840, William had
reached a plateau that few whites let alone blacks had ever reached. In
the early 1840s his sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston
and came to live on the Ellison Plantation. His sons became slave
owners with the help of their father. The slaves were from the Ellison
family and were just passed down to the next generation. These slaves
were not income producing slaves, but rather house servants. By 1860,
Ellison increased his slave population from thirty-six in 1850 to
sixty-three, an increase of seventy-five percent.

That
year, in the census he reported that his total worth was just over
$61,000, which was very low for the property and personal slaves that he
owned. The man who started out life as a slave achieved financial
success. His wealth was 90 percent greater than his white neighbors in
Sumter district. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much
real estate as Ellison. His wealth was fifteen times greater than that
of the state’s average for whites, and Ellison owned more than 99
percent of the South’s slaveholders. He never achieved a monopoly in
Stateburg, but was the highest producing slave owner in the county.
Without slaves Ellison could never gotten past the income of a
tradesman; with the slaves he accomplished the security of no other.

Although,
a successful slave owner and cotton farmer, Ellison major source of
income came from “slave breeding.” Throughout the South slave breeding
was looked down on with disgust. He began slave breeding in 1840.
Females were not productive workers in his factor or cotton fields, so
he only kept a few women for breeders, and sold most of his females. He
had the reputation of being a harsh master. His slaves were the worst
fed and clothed. He maintained on his property a windowless building
where he chained his problem slaves.

His
slaves were listed among the runaways because of his harsh treatment.
Having started life out as a slave did not make him sensitive to their
needs because he saw his slaves as no more than property.

On one occasion Ellison hired the services of a slave catcher.
According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had
purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s hunted down one of his
valuable slave in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: “I was paid $77.50
returning the slave, and $74.00 for expenses.”

William
Ellison died on December 5, 1861. According to his last will and
testament his estate should be divided jointly by his free daughter and
two surviving sons; he also bequeathed $500 to a daughter he had sold
into slavery.

During
the Civil War the Ellison family actively participated and supported
the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire
plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and
cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the
war, and they also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds,
treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate
currency. At the end of the war all this was worthless and cost the
family a great deal of wealth.

On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison’s oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st
South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.
P. Galliard and A. H. Boykin, local whites who knew that Buckner was
Black was but overlooked this factor because of the Ellison family’s
prestige and money his race status was changed to “honorary” white.
Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in
Stateburg in August, 1895, he was praised by his former Confederate
officers as being a “faithful soldier.”

WHITE SKIN BLACK MASK

The
majority of the colored masters were mulattoes and their slaves were
overwhelmingly of black skin. There was strong division between the two
classes based on color, class, status and a culture of whiteness.
There was a color and cultural clash between the two groups. The
mulatto community in Charleston separated themselves from the dark
skinned people, and they banned dark skinned people from their social
clubs and seldom married unmixed blacks.

They
created exclusionary societies such as the Brown Fellowship society.
Membership was based on brown skin meaning the sons and daughters of
slave masters. They formed schools and benevolent groups to provide
mutual aid and operated a burial ground and society. Among its members
were John W. Gordon, William T. Oliver, Edward P. and Lafayette F. Wall,
Richard Dereef and Robert Houston.

Richard
Edward Dereef was one of the richest black men in Charleston. He had a
Wharf at the end of Chapel Street, was in the wood business, and owned
slaves and rental properties, most of which were located on the east
side of Charleston. Richard Dereef would never have been accepted into
Charleston’s elite mulatto society, but he claimed to be an Indian- and
had money. For the most part the mulatto slave owner aligned themselves
with the white ruling class and helped to preserve the system of
slavery.

Among
black slave holders the free mulattoes owners were over represented,
being the offspring of white planters and merchants. Many of their
white fathers provided for them. Thomas Hanscome, a white planter of
St. James and Goose Creek, provided for the mulatto children of Nancy
Randale, a free black woman, with six slaves as well as stocks and bonds
valued at $150,000. In 1823, the mulatto children of Henry Glencamp,
the superintendent of the Sante Canal, and Jenny Wilson, a free black
woman, inherited eighteen slaves as well as the plantation called Pine
Hill in Stephens of Charleston District.

Many
white fathers accepted their black children as legitimate heirs. For
example, the children of Michael Fowler, a white planter of Christ
church Parish, and his black slave/wife named Sibb lived as man and wife
and raised a family on his plantation. According to Calvin D. Wilson
“there was a rich planter in Charleston named Fowler who took a woman of
African descent and established her in his home…There was a daughter
born, who was called Isabella; the planter insisted that she be called
as miss Fowler. He expected his slaves to treat his mulatto children if
though they were white. His children were so acculturated into the
white elite slave holding class that they only associated with whites.
In 1810, the estate of Michael Fowler was divided among his mulatto
children: John Fowler, Jacob Fowler, Stanhope Fowler, Nelly Fowler
Collins, Becky Fowler and Isabell Fowler Dereef. The Fowler failed to
emancipate any of their slaves and regarded them as investment
property. They held their slaves until the end of the Civil War.

Many enslaved mulattoes like William Ellison started out as a slave. Another case is Anthony Weston, a de facto
free black of Charleston City, was trained as a millwright. As the
slave of Plowder Weston, he was able to hire himself out to several
white planters as well as work for his master. In 1826, his master
declared him freed. His skill as a millwright allowed him to accumulate
a great deal of wealth and he began to invest in slaves. Technically
being a slave himself, he purchased a large number of slaves in his wife
name between 1834 and 1835, to purchase a total of 20 slaves, investing
$8,950. He trained some of his slaves as mill wrights and they worked
in his business. He became one of the wealthiest black persons in the
city. By 1860, his estate was valued at $48,075 by city officials

In
1822, Moses Brown, a colored barber, purchased an African American boy
named Moses from Mary Warhaim for $300. He trained the boy in the art
of barbering. By 1823, the boy was working in his shop on 5 Tradd
Street as a barber. In 1829, Camilla Johnson, a colored pastry cook,
purchased a mulatto woman named Charleston Todd from Joseph and Ann
Wilkie for $375. According to a Charleston socialite, Camilla Johnson
used her mulatto servant to work at several of the parties she was hired
to cater.

RICHARD HOLLOWAY SR.

Richard
Holloway Sr., a free person of color bought a slave named Charles
Benford in order that the slave might enjoy his freedom. Yet at the
same time he owned other slaves who were not treated so kindly. In
1834, he purchased a slave woman named Sarah and her two children,
Annett and Edward, from Susan B. Robertson for $575. Within three years
after the purchase, he apparently became dissatisfied with the slave
family and sold them for $945. Even though Richard Holloway, Sr.,
allowed a trusted servant to enjoy-his freedom, he was still a slave
owner for profit. He sold and purchased slaves as an investment.

In
1851, Elizabeth Collinis Holloway, a woman of color, placed her servant
Celia in the city jail after her slave had run away. In 1852,
Holloway’s servant Peggy was confined in the workhouse for disciplinary
reasons.

In
the Palmetto (rice areas) there were only seven large rice planters of
African descent, and they were primarily related to white kin. One
example of this is the Pendarvis family, which was one of the largest
slave owning “colored” families to plant rice in the state during the
1730s. The mulatto children of Joseph Pendarvis, a white planter of
Colleton County, and his African mistress Parthena, were given 1,009
acres of land near the Green Savanna as well as a plantation in
Charleston Neck. Joseph Pendarvis gave to his children James, Brand,
William, John, Thomas, Mary, and Elizabeth, land, money and slaves.
They became one of the wealthiest and most prominent slaveholding
families in South Carolina. James the first born received most of the
property of his deceased father, and owned more than 100 slaves. By
1786, he owned 113 slaves and 3,250 acres of land. The 1790 census
informs us that he owned 123 slaves. Many of the mulatto offspring of
white planters became large plantation owners in their own right.

For
example, Margaret Mitchell Harris and her half brother Robert Michael
Collins inherit money, plantation and slaves from their white father.
In 1844, she bought Santee Plantation for 4,050, but made $7,635 from
the harvest in 1849. She ran a profitable enterprise.

SUMMARY

The
notion of a homogenous African American group united by a common
African ethnicity and culture is a myth. Many scholars failed to
recognize the diversity in language, culture, class and color among
African Americans, and how those differences provided one group of
African Americans with extraordinary opportunities for higher
educational and trade skills when compared to the black population.
Historically, there has always been great tension between the “mulatto”
and black classes because of the association of “yellow” skin with high
status and class within the black social apex. Slave masters exploited
these tensions for their obvious benefits, keeping their mulatto
children elevated over the African field worker, and African Americans
have continue to perpetuated this system of privilege and discrimination
based on light skin long after whites stop make any distinction between
light and dark skinned blacks. The root to this disparity is the
American plantation during the 17th and 18th century.

The
majority of black slave owners were members of the mulatto class, and
in most cases were the sons and daughters of white slave masters. Many
of the mulatto slave owners separated themselves from the masses of
black people and attempted to establish a caste system based on color,
wealth, and free status. According to Martin Delany, the colored
community of Charleston City clung to the assumptions of the superiority
of white blood and brown skin complexion.

After
slavery it was the children of the mulato class that was more willing
to cross the color line and to bridge the gap between light-skinned and
dark-skinned blacks. Also, a large number of the “new” black leaders in
the South came from this class/caste group. The sons and daughters of
black slave masters were educated and resourceful. In the late 1860s,
Frances Rollins, the daughter of William Rollins, a black slave owner of
Charleston City, worked as a school teacher in Beaufort County. She
was educated at the Institution for Colored Youth in Philadelphia and
was one of four sisters who worked to uplift the newly freed in South
Carolina. Later, she married William James Whipper, a state
representative of South Carolina. Thaddeus Sasportas, the son of Joseph
A. Sasportas, a mulatto slave owner, went to Orangeburg County to aid
the ex-slaves and to work as a teacher, where he taught ex-slaves to
read and write.

Bibliography

Franklin, John Hope, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans. New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1980.

Johnson, Michael P. and James L. Roark. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South. New York: W.W Norton and Company, 1984.

On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison’s oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P. P. Galliard and A. H. Boykin, local whites who knew that Buckner was Black was but overlooked this factor because of the Ellison family’s prestige and money his race status was changed to “honorary” white. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895, he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a “faithful soldier.”

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